Regina Noctis

*collapses in relief*

The van is back. Fixed. If it wasn’t for everything else, I could go spend a few days in the Bay Area.

But…

When we took Morris in for his leg, it had not only gotten re-infected, there was the start of necrosis, as I’d worried when I saw that the flesh in the shaved patch on his leg was turning black.It was caught early enough that there won’t be any permanent damage, but he has to be medicated twice a day for seven days, without missing. The final day of medication will be my first day of class. So, Morris will be okay, and that, at least, is good news.

The psycho cousin is over here almost every day since he lost his job. Instead of heading to the Bay Area, I should work on paperwork to keep him away.

Two papers to write, one requiring heavy research.

A complex final project for Digital Imaging that I’ve made a start on, but will require a lot of work before it’s finished.

And now Whiskers has disappeared. He started coughing a couple days ago, an early warning sign that there’s an asthma attack looming. We were managing to hold it off with the non-steroidal medication, to give the poor cat a break from the heavy steroid injects he has to get to control the real attacks. The steroids are not the ones so prone to abuse to build the body up. These tear the body down, breaking down muscle tissue and damaging internal organs. We’ve seen that he’s lost muscle mass. So we try to give him some time off the steroids, if the asthma will let us. He seemed to be doing well on them. He hadn’t even coughed since the first warning. We’ve also wanted to give him a break from the steroids (he’s been on them without a break for nearly a year) because he has recently been showing signs of behavioural problems that are probably something like feline ‘roid rage. He has attacked Morris once, though that was probably self-defense because Morris is the house bully. But he has also attacked the kitten, and tried to kill her, twice. The first time, she was asleep on the carpet, and he was sitting in a chair. All of the sudden, he jumped down and grabbed her by the throat. She was trying to pull away, but he was biting down and she was making strangled-sounding little noises, all she could do. We got him away from her. Then he did it again yesterday, charged into my room and attacked Extra again.

And now he has disappeared. He was last seen around 1 in the afternoon, so it’s now been around 14 hours. His asthma attacks used to build up slowly, but they’ve gotten to the point that the onset is fast, and he can go inside an hour (or less) from minor coughing to nearly dying of suffocation. We have searched repeatedly and can’t find him. We’ve left a door open in case he comes back, so that means the house is vulnerable to ravages by my psychotic cousin. There is the possibility he’ll come back. He’s disappared during an asthma attack before, and was gone for around 22 hours. He finally showed up that time around six the following morning, in desperate shape, but we were able to get him to the vet on time. All we can do is wait and hope.

Between the disappearance of Whiskers and the house being vulnerable to John, I’m unable to sleep. And I just got caught up today on sleep after being up with Morris all night when he was in so much pain that he could only lie there and moan.

This has been the most stress-filled “vacation” I’ve ever had.

Whiskers has to come back. He’s got to. I don’t think either my mom or I could take it if he’s gone…

The van is finally back. Despite the suspicions, it wasn’t totalled or sold. Instead, it just needs repairs. Again. As it always does after the cousin has borrowed it. It went into the shop today with some sort of engine issue, and who knows how long it’ll be before it’s out. They didn’t have an estimate for us.

All the stress has had me physically exhausted. Other than waking periodically for a meal or a brief ramble online, I’ve been asleep for the last couple days. Apparently it’s just as well that I was asleep, because psycho showed up here again today, and spent hours tearing my grandmother down verbally. When my mother went in to defend her, he turned on my mother and started yelling at her. My grandmother went into her hysterical drama-queen sobbing and announcements that she wishes she was dead. She was angry not at my cousin for everything that he’s done and is doing, but at my mother for not just letting John do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. As far as my grandmother’s concered, we’re supposed to just let John do whatever he wants, to anyone he wants, at any time he wants. We’re all just supposed to let it happen. If we don’t, we’re “attacking” the poor, “mistreated” baby. You know, the guy that’s had everything handed to him on a silver platter by my grandmother. That poor, mistreated baby.

Since I slept through the drama then, my grandmother had to give me a dose of drama of my very own. I was quietly eating dinner, and she started up one of her little games that’s designed to make me “get all angry for no reason” and prove once again that I’m the horrible bitch that she likes to paint me as. This particular game is the “How come?” game. She asks me a question, a perfectly reasonable question with no hidden little traps. If I don’t answer it, then I’m ignoring her and I’m a horrible bitch. So I answer it. This time it was, “Where were you all day today?” So I said that I’d been in my room, and that I’d been asleep for most of the day. Before the Magic Pajamas, this was a common occurence, something that’s gone on for years as I struggle with sleep disorders. But this time she acted all shocked and surprised, like this was something unprecedented. She said, “How come?” So I said that I’d been very tired and needed to catch up on sleep, since I’d been so exhausted I felt ill. “How come?” Because I’ve been stressed with all the stuff about the van and trying to get two papers written. “How come?”

By this many rounds of how come, I’m usually starting to have a hard time keeping my voice even. And I know that she’s waiting for me to sound even just the tiniest bit irritated, so she can go ballistic on me and then storm off, my horrible mistreatment of her confirmed because I “snapped” at her just for “trying to have a simple conversation” with me.

So this time I tried a different tack, and said, as gently as I could, “Grandma, please don’t answer everything with another ‘how come?’ We’ve done this so many times, and we both know that it always winds up making at least one of us angry. Please, can we just talk instead of playing this game?”

Didn’t do any good to try and take this tack, however. She went ballistic on me anyway. She started yelling about how I treat her so awfully when all she’s trying to do is have a talk with me since she hasn’t seen me all day. Then she announced that she’d never speak to me again, since I obviously hate her and never ever talk nicely with her, and if I will “allow” her to speak ever again, just let her know by saying, “Hello.” Then she stormed off into the kitchen to slam things around.

What I wanted to say then, but didn’t, was that she should stop acting like a bratty little six year old instead of the woman of 89 that she is.

I worked a very long time to restore a little of my lost equilibrium and sanity after the last time I lived here. I’ve fought very hard not to turn back into the self-loathing person I was after being subjected to my grandmother and cousin when I was a teenager. I’ve lasted longer, but I think my grip is starting to slip. For a little while after this all happened, I was doing the it’s-all-my-fault thing that I did all the time when I was a teen. To try and get out of the mindset, since I knew that this was both wrong and unhealthy but couldn’t seem to stop feeling it anyway, I went and talked with my mom about it. She was good at supporting me when these things happen over the years since I moved back here. But this time, her reaction just fed it. “We all screw up, all the time. That’s how it is.” And then she wouldn’t speak any more either. All of this very nearly started a round of self-loathing thought, but I went out to my room and fought it off.

When I was here during high school, I never got a break from the insanity of my cousin and grandmother. Most of that time, my mother was either living in Mexico with my father, or in the Bay Area, so I had no support. I had no friends outside of Delano, and only two real friends in Delano, so I didn’t really have anyone to turn to.

Thanks to the psychotic cousin taking the van just in time for every vacation I’ve had, I’ve been stuck here without a break for nearly a year now. I need the time away to relax for a while, enjoy myself, and replenish the well, so to speak, of strength to deal with everything here. I’m feeling completely drained, exhausted (and not physically), and stretched to my absolute limit. Anger was my shield for a long time, but I’m starting to lose the ability to use it that way. I’m so tired of it all, and starting to feel hopeless.

On top of all of that, I’m worried about my cat. He had an abscess in his leg, and the vet drained it and gave us antibiotic pills to give him. My mom is usually the cat medicator, but after two days, forgot to give Morris any more medication. Tonight, he started crying if anyone touched him, and the spot on his leg where the abscess was, though the skin has healed over, is red and black, and hot to the touch. It looks to me like it’s swollen quite a bit, but Mom didn’t think so and is thinking that she won’t take him to the vet tomorrow. I’m going to push for it tomorrow, and will be medicating him myself meanwhile. Which means, since I need to be here to be sure he gets the medication, I won’t be going to the Bay Area at all, even if the van winds up fixed in time for me to have a few days before classes start back up on the 18th.

I am so tired. Of everything.

The psycho still doesn’t have the van back.

He did get his car out of the mud. His car being stuck was the reason he borrowed the van in the first place. We finally got a couple clear days, and it dried up enough for him to move his car. We know for a fact it’s out of the mud, because he showed up here twice in it yesterday.

His car had gotten stuck in the mud because he let some teenage kid drive it during the rains. They were both in the car, and the kid drove it off the pavement and onto a dirt road, which of course was thoroughly soaked by this nearly-month-long rain we’ve had.

Well, after he got his car out of the mud, he gave the kid the van to drive instead of bringing the van back here. From there, the psycho cousin’s story has changed repeatedly. First the kid had supposedly driven the van out to Famoso. Then the kid supposedly needed to go and shave, so the van would be here in an hour. Then the van was supposed to be here before the night was over.

The psycho showed up again today, and now he says that he has no idea where the kid and the van are. He also said that it’s not his responsibility or his problem that the kid has the van who-knows-where. Says it has nothing to do with him.

I suspected last night that the van either got sold – since the psycho has never been shy about selling things owned by other people – or that the van had been totalled and he didn’t want to admit it. My grandmother woke up with the same theory this morning. When I was talking with my mom about it today, I pointed out that the psycho managed to lose his latest job – he never manages to hold onto any job for long (a month is usually his average) – but he hasn’t been getting money from my grandmother, so he doubtless needed something to live on. He didn’t have the pink slip on the van, obviously, but I don’t think that would stop either him or the few people that he associates with if he decided to sell it.

My grandmother threatened last night to go to the police if the van wasn’t back today, but has predictabley backed down on this. Now we’re going to wait until Monday before going to the police.

With everything going on, and the lack of a vehicle, it looks like I will once again have to cancel all the plans I made to get out of here for a little while. And I’m feeling like a prisoner here. We have to lock everything down so the psycho doesn’t come in and steal what few things remain from his previous rampages. We’re nailing down windows so they can’t be opened. I’m locked out of the house at night so he can’t get in.

I wish he’d just overdose already and get out of our lives for good.

So, I had planned to head up to the Bay Area on the first day of my spring break, Friday the 7th. Now it looks like I might not be able to go at all. As has happened every single time I had plans to get out of here for a while for the past year, the psychotic asshole has taken the second car. Who knows when he’ll bring it back? He’s been known to keep it for extended times, anything up to a month or two. And usually does so if it inconviences me enough. I can’t very well take the only remaining car and leave the mother and grandmother units without any vehicle whatsoever, so there’s a very good chance that I’m stuck here yet again. The last time I was able to get out a break from Hellano and the psychoness of family relations was last BayCon. That’s close to a year ago. I also nearly didn’t make it up to the Bay Area when I’d planned to even then. The cousin took the van, but we managed to get him to bring it back the day I was supposed to leave. Way later than I’d have liked, but at least it was back.

I am SO sick of this, I can’t even begin to find the words to describe exactly how much.

In other news, I overheard a conversation at my college’s campus that made me want to cry for the state of education in the US.

Chick one: Weirdo!
*general laughter*
Chick two: Yeah, that’s the right verb!
Chick one: We should write her and tell her so.
*pause*
Wait, how do you spell “weirdo”?
Chick two: W E E R D O H.

Aaargh. Just aaargh.

For the first time in months, the Magic Pajamas have failed me. It’s nearly six, my alarm goes off at 9:30, and I’m still awake.

I guess that even Magic Pajamas can’t conquer insomnia caused by rage at the psychotic cousin.